ODE Poem: THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND RELATIONSHIPS, by Emi Miyaoka

Can I accept my death?
It was a question that worried me recently.

When I was in elementary school
I realized that I would die someday.
It was when I heard that
the sun and the earth each have a life span.
My teacher said，
the earth and the universe are not eternal，
even though we exist here at this moment now.
My sight, the future, and the world
turned dark, all at once.
As soon as I came home from school，
( It was a Saturday afternoon )
I made a great fuss about it to my parents,
but I got only a paltry reaction from them;
they found my worries simply amusing.

How can other people pass the days in ordinary ways，
nevertheless knowing the earth will certainly collapse?
As one child in the solar system,
I felt a vague kind of anxiety
that goes nowhere, I remember—
It might be the anxiety
of living as a human being.

Human beings are known to be social creatures, but
the family is such a fragile relationship among people.
I realized that being over twenty-five years old.
I have passed the age when my mother bore me.
What is family?
—an unstable form bounded by the chance of
coming across each other.
Sometimes, it is an accident;
I don’t know why, after some time，
it becomes a laughing matter.
It is quite amazing.

We continue to lose.
At the same time，
we continue to gain a lot.
That destiny intends for us.
And then we realize that
—we keep fighting as a form of life
beyond the border in which we living.

Time continues to exist.
Endless construction and dismantling are repeated
while time transforms.
The form it is firmly tied to
by our states of existence